The Chicago Board of Education approved a multibillion-dollar budget for everyday expenses and new debt Wednesday, prompting officials to repeat their praise for recent fiscal peace amid concerns from civic and disability rights groups.

The roughly $6 billion operating budget for Chicago Public Schools marks a nearly $285 million spending increase from last year and includes about $60 million in extra funding for schools to help cover unionized teacher salary increases.

Officials credit an on-time state spending plan that increased aid to CPS — plus state assistance for teacher pensions and additional property tax dollars — with allowing the district to borrow at lower rates, ease off some of its need for enormous cash loans and win slight upgrades to what are still junk bonds.

“Clearly we have some room for improvement,” district Chief Financial Officer Jennie Huang Bennett told board members. “I don’t think anyone would stand here and say we’re there financially, but we have significantly improved.”

After having burned through its cash reserves to cover past deficits, CPS expects to restore a positive balance at the end of the fiscal year in a fund designated for emergencies.

“Today, we have enough cash to pay our bills,” said board President Frank Clark, who was reappointed to his post by his fellow members Wednesday. “But we’re also borrowing at a much more advantageous, lower interest rate.”

While CPS is not currently scraping together cash to pay its bills and keep school doors open, it must continue to confront looming challenges including a half-empty city teachers pension fund and growing costs to pay off its debts.

CPS said it carried $8.2 billion in long-term debt as of June 30.

Those debts will increase in order to finance Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s election-year proposal to take on a $989 million infrastructure spending plan that has been met with growing complaints about inequitable distribution.

The district says much of that money will come from new long-term debt, a strategy that provoked concerns from the Civic Federation budget watchdog organization.

The group endorsed the overall CPS spending plan — but worried about the district’s growing expenses in the face of dwindling enrollment and continued uncertainty over state government’s ability to keep promises to better fund education and grapple with its own financial problems.

“With CPS’ finances just barely having reached more stable footing, the Civic Federation does not believe this is the right time to be issuing massive amounts of additional debt with only a portion going to the District’s most critical facility needs,” the watchdog group said in its annual assessment of the district’s budget.

The Access Living disability rights group also questioned the district’s plans to hire new special education personnel while under the supervision of an Illinois State Board of Education monitor.

The $26 million effort would give 78 schools at least one new special education case manager to help ensure that students receive services to which they are entitled through individual special education plans. The hiring also would assign one full-time social worker to 160 elementary and high school campuses.

The district also committed in January to financing 65 new special education positions at schools throughout the city.

“With CPS’ well-intentioned but ambitious expansion of their plan for positions, the biggest concern is effective staffing,” Access Living said in its annual assessment of the district budget.

“This is a pattern that has occurred in multiple years. CPS pledges additional special education positions and does not hold itself accountable for what it promised.”

School officials acknowledged the challenge of hiring qualified personnel.

“That’s going to be more of a yearlong process to be able to fill those positions,” CPS special education chief Elizabeth Keenan said Wednesday.

“Special education programming, particularly special education teachers, are the hardest ones to fill. Social workers, we have more availability to them, but to scale it to 160 very quickly is going to be difficult, but we are interviewing and hiring as fast as we can.”